American Comedienne living in Belgium and blogging about odds and bits

30 July 2009

Highlights of Gentse Feesten 2009

If you don't know what the Gentse Feesten is, it's a yearly 10 day festival in the city of Gent (a.k.a. "Ghent") where I live in Belgium. It just ended, so don't rush out here or anything, but a very nice time was had by all. I spent most of my time at our comedy room as I can't stand crowds (kind of a drawback at festival time, I know) but I took pictures of lots of stuff anyway. So here's some stuff:

OK - here's the first thing. This is a pee stand. They have these all over the place during the Feesten, and even though there were more of them this year than any other year, apparently there was a 200% increase in the number of incidents of wild plassen (peeing in random places). Although the mind boggles as to how they arrive at these statistics.

Here is what the area behind the comedy space looked like. Those white panels you see everywhere are really insipid poems mounted on sticks.

And here's the last day of the festival when they removed the poetry panels! Yaaay

Here's one of the non-crowded streets I favored on my walk home.

The best act at the Gentse Feesten.

An empty pee-stand on the last day. Cute graffiti, eh?

Wim as he appears all through the festival with a phone permanently embedded in his ear.

Big bad scary Antwerp Comedy Mafioso, Fokke!

This is my I-don't-like-crowds shaky photographic handywork.

You turn your back on those Russian bartenders for one second.....

The worst act at the Gentse Feesten. There is nothing less appealing than bitter out of work actors making uninspired balloon animals whilst wearing wanky costumes

Ghosts! See those orbs?! Those are ghosts! ....I took this photo over my shoulder in an attempt to clandestinely photograph one of the pee stands being used; I misaimed and got ghosts!.....